


it’s time to wake up from this

by interstellarbeams



Category: La Reina del Sur (TV), Queen of the South (TV)
Genre: (in a non-creepy way of course), 5 Times, F/M, Protectiveness, Season/Series 01, Season/Series 02, Season/Series 03, Snapshots, Watching Someone Sleep
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-02
Updated: 2018-08-02
Packaged: 2019-06-20 17:58:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15539823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/interstellarbeams/pseuds/interstellarbeams
Summary: Five times James watches over Teresa while she sleeps and one time she does the same for him.





	it’s time to wake up from this

**Author's Note:**

> So thankful to my new beta Emily for all of her help! I’m glad we found each other! 
> 
> And thanks go out to my other new friend Steph who listened to my ideas for this fic and gave me advice and squealed over this with me. 
> 
> Okay, I figured I would try my hand at these two because they have been getting progressively ruder since season 1, and this fandom needs fanfic so here’s my attempt. 
> 
> Kudos and comments are appreciated! <3

At first he watches her because he expects her to run. They always do. 

Acceptance is never a person's first instinct when they find themselves forced into this life — he should know, he struggled with it too and he _chose_ it.

Fight or flight usually led to the path of least resistance — flight was so much easier because fighting takes courage, fighting takes balls and Teresa Mendoza definitely has balls.

The fluorescent lights buzz overhead, casting the shadow of the chain link fence surrounding the sleeping girls across her form. She lays with her back to him and the rest of the room, her dark hair in haphazard curls across the worn pillowcase.

_Does she know he’s watching? Can she feel his eyes on her?_

He swears he’s only glancing at her occasionally, but Charger keeps giving him these weird looks. He forces himself to turn away, to go back to the business at hand.

He’s more wary of her than anything — _right?_ — afraid of what she might cost him, Camila, and the business. That’s all it is.

He could put it down as professional concern — he’s in this business for where it can take _him_ , not to feel sorry for some girl from Jalisco with a dead boyfriend. 

But no matter what he tells himself, he can’t help but glance over at her one more time before calling it a night, throwing his leather jacket over his shoulder and heading towards his car and home to Kim. 

—————

He arrives at the warehouse rubbing the sleep out of his eyes and checking the time on his phone before tucking it into his back pocket.

He lets himself in, the metal door creaking as it was forced open, and he cringes at the echo that reverberates down the surprisingly quiet city street. He keeps his hands loose and swinging at his sides just in case one of the guards thinks to question him in the dimness of the early morning. He doesn’t want to be mistaken for an intruder and shot on sight. That is not the way he would like to start off his Monday morning. 

He eases the door closed behind him, no need to wake the other girls who have busy days ahead of them. He nods at Charger who is sitting in the doorway nursing a styrofoam cup of coffee. 

He thinks it would have been nice to lay low just a little while longer. Despite Leon Terris’s death, he still feels an itch in between his shoulder blades like he’s being watched that he doesn’t care for, but Camila wouldn’t take no for an answer.

Blowing out a breath, he relaxes his shoulders and shoves his paranoia to a far corner of his brain. The chain link rattles as he pushes his way in but the mumbled moaning from the bed closest to him stops him in his tracks.

_Shit._

Sweat glistens on Teresa’s face and neck and an overwhelming worry that she’s ODing distracts him from the job and sends his stomach dropping to his feet. 

_Where the hell did she get the drugs?_

He presses a hand to her shoulder, her skin damp but cool to the touch, trying to wake her up from what must be a nightmare if her thrashing and fluttering eyelids are any indication.

“Teresa? _Teresa_ , wake up.” He recognizes pleading in the tone of his voice, surprised by the worry that had flooded him over a girl he has only known a few weeks. 

_Keep_ it together, he thinks to himself as he grips her shoulder tighter. _It’s just a nightmare, she’ll be fine._

She gasps suddenly, shooting up in the bed and almost colliding with him. He settles back on his heels, unobtrusively moving out of her personal space.

Her eyes shift around the room frantically, like she’s searching for the source of her nightmare before they come to rest on him.

“ _James_?” She croaks, her throat tight with tension.

He nods at her, his fingers twitching against his leg as a sudden longing for a cigarette hits him.

“What are you doing here?” She asks incredulously, pulling the threadbare quilt up to her neck with one hand while twisting a loose thread around the finger of her other hand.

“There’s a job. Camila sent me.” He stands from his crouched position, pushing his flopping bangs out of the way with a fidgety hand.

“ _Oh_ , let me get dressed.” She watches him warily for a moment.

He finally figures out what she’s waiting for - _privacy_. “Uh, I’ll just be outside.”

Walking away, he can’t help but notice the quiet sob she releases, but he ignores it for both their sakes. He can’t afford to care, it just leads to pain in the end, but the apparent nightmare haunts her eyes long after they leave the warehouse. 

—————

 

He notices the tear tracks almost immediately, his powers of perception heightened by his years as a sniper and his position with the cartel, but he doesn’t mention it. He just asks if she’s alright and lets her hide behind her bathroom excuse. If she wants to tell him what’s really wrong, she will, but it’s her decision. 

He waits for her in the car, tapping his fingers against the leather-covered steering wheel as he searches for a flash of white in his rearview mirror. He isn’t left waiting long before she shows up, a barely-there smile lifting the corner of her mouth, and he jumps out to open the door for her.

She’s already settled in with her seatbelt buckled when he slides into the driver’s seat but she has her head turned towards the window when he glances her way.

Putting the car in drive, he pulls away from the Van Awken mansion, eyes trained on the shadows, worry — not just for his safety, but hers as well — warring within him as he drives them towards “home.” 

The inside of the car is quiet, the occasional bump of the tires hitting a road stud loud in the stillness. The streetlights over the highway send stripes of light across the car and he turns her way, eyes flicking from her to the road and back again as he tries to gauge her mood.

They stop at a red light as they head into downtown Dallas and when he glances over again she is asleep. 

Her forehead is pressed against the glass and he frowns at how uncomfortable the position looks, but there’s nothing he can do about it now. Grasping the steering wheel, with fingers tensing with the want to make it better, to take away the pain that he saw flicker across her face back in the guest bedroom, he turns into the driveway.

Giving a quick nod, the signal for _all clear_ to the head of Camila’s security team, he parks the car as carefully as he can in order to not wake her.

Shutting the engine off, he waits for a moment, letting her rest for a little while, hoping that her dreams are treating her more kindly than the world she’s living in when she opens her eyes. 

—————

 

The _El Camino de la Muerte_ is a rough road. The rolicking from hitting all the deep ruts and potholes would have sent them sliding across the cab if they — Guero, Teresa and himself — weren’t all crammed in together, shoulder to shoulder. 

Teresa’s head bobs toward her chest as it has continuously for the last few miles and she jerks herself up, pushing her damp hair out of her face and grimacing at the stickiness from El Capitana’s blood that she couldn’t wash free.

He watches her from the corner of his eye, a constant worry niggling at his brain like a forgotten word on the tip of his tongue. Fatigue is weighing her down but she struggles against its constant pull. He knows why she won’t let herself drift off, but he can’t help but wish for the mental relief that it would give her. 

He wants to offer his shoulder as a sturdier place to rest her head against the constant dip and sway of the truck cab, but he doesn’t know how to broach the subject and Güero’s disapproving glare isn’t exactly encouraging.

Staring out the windshield, he warily watches the surrounding jungle. With all the trouble they’ve already experienced on this trip, he isn’t planning on letting down his guard anytime soon. Trouble has a way of finding them, of finding her as he told her once before, and now is not the time to let down his guard.

The heat is stifling and the old truck’s air conditioning isn’t up to the task of keeping them cool. A drop of sweat trickles down the side of his face and as he reaches to wipe it he freezes when Teresa slumps over, fast asleep against his side.

Afraid to move an inch and wake her, he decides to chance it, and moves his arm behind her, not exactly pulling her against him but enough of a hold to keep them comfortable in the cramped truck cab.

He turns his attention back to the jungle outside the truck window and ignores the glare that Güero is probably sending his way for the warmth of her softness against him. 

He hopes his close proximity can at least offer her some comfort when her bad dreams inevitably try to drag her down. 

The rest of the trip is spent in silence besides the occasional put on sigh from the driver’s seat, but James surprisingly doesn’t mind as long as he gets to keep Teresa by his side. 

—————

The tile floor is cool against his bare feet as he walks the now familiar hallway to the guest room at the very end. A faint light shines through the doorway from the lone lamp on the nightstand next to the bed. It’s disconcerting how familiar he is with this bedroom now, from the lace on the curtains’ edge to the authentic Maltese rug underneath the small bed.

Pote’s breathing is slow and steady, nothing to worry about there, despite the white of the bandages wrapped around his hand and, to stabilize it, part of his arm. He’s mending, slowly but surely - at least according to the doctor they paid under the table to look after him. 

Teresa’s sitting in an uncomfortable looking hardback chair that is pulled as close to the bed as is physically possible and her dark head is pillowed on her arms. Despite his every effort and assurance that Pote would be fine — _the doctor said so, didn’t he?_ — she wouldn’t budge from his side. Groaning internally at the kind of pain that must be causing her, James glances around the room before grabbing the throw blanket on the chest at the end of the bed and draping it around her shoulders.

Her forehead is creased by a frown and he wishes there was a way for him to wipe it away but they’re hardly at that stage in their relationship. She has just started trusting him again over the last few days and he doesn’t want to risk it by being too forward with her. 

He sighs to himself, pinching the bridge of his nose as exhaustion pulls at him, but he ignores it, instead propping himself against the door frame and standing watch, only daring to leave and head to his own bed when the first of the sun’s rays reaches the edge of the bed and lights the top of her head with auburn highlights. 

—————

The bright morning light shining through the eastern facing windows creeps across the bed, illuminating the folds of the twisted comforter. Teresa awakes with a gasp that has become so routine that she is surprised she isn’t used to it by now, a hand pressed to her sweat slicked chest. The unfamiliarity of the room causes her already racing heart to skip a beat, but then it dawns on her — the where and the why — as her grogginess clears. 

_James_. 

Rubbing at her eyes, she turns onto her side, tucking her hand underneath her pillow, and allows herself a moment to watch him sleep.

She’s never seen him like this, so relaxed and at ease. His brow is smooth, released of its serious burden, and she barely notices the crease that his habitual expressions leave behind.

It would be an understatement to say that they live busy lives, hectic seems much more their speed. They’re always on the go, constant meetings with buyers and their new deal with La Comision leaving them on edge, the newness of the partnership making her feel like she is standing on shaky ground. 

But now he is her rock, her constant, and she can’t imagine trying to run this business without him, or even imagine her life without him in it,. She might not have trusted him from the moment they met, but he grew on her, slowly becoming her friend and confidant, her protector, and now her lover. 

She doesn’t really remember when her life became her own again. Maybe it started out slowly, from the moment she told Camila that they were partners at Brenda’s grave or the moment she stepped onto that boat to Malta without Guero and didn’t look back, but her life is completely different than it was six months ago and she couldn’t ask for a better man with whom to share her new life.

Smiling to herself, she can’t help but reach out a hand to brush against his arm. Surprisingly, he doesn’t wake up and she enjoys the warmth of his skin against the palm of her hand. The memories of just how horrible her life within the Vargas cartel was, how she had craved to see a welcoming face or the touch of another person — a touch that wasn’t violent and meant to hurt and damage but to show love and care, even kindness. Despite James’ outward stoic appearance, he had tried in his own way to show that he cared and that he saw her as more than another acquisition.

She lets her eyes slip closed, her hand still on his arm, hoping to get some more sleep, but her mind won’t shut down, random thoughts about the business and memories of the night before flitting through her mind like a darting hummingbird among her abuelita’s flower garden. 

Resigned to the fact that she wouldn’t be getting anymore sleep this morning, she sits up, sighing as she stretches out the lethargy in her muscles. Her stomach growls suddenly and her thoughts immediately go to breakfast.

Her thoughts drifts to the night before and James’ wish for a “decent ribeye steak” and the thought of steak and eggs has her stomach growling louder in protest. Powering on her tablet, she searches for the closest grocery store and, seeing that it’s about ten minutes away, slides off of the bed to get ready for the day. Hopefully she would be back before James woke up and could present him with the breakfast she had made just for them to share.

Smiling at the slumbering sight he made in the bed, her fondest wish in that moment was for him to be having a sweet dream.


End file.
